The Greenwood Forest Case Study

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, August 3, 2008

This story is the second in a series that looks at the state’s appraisal system.

Tired of trying to make sense of the Harris County Appraisal District’s valuation of his home, Jerry Skertich met with local officials to voice his concern.

He came to his meetings with State Representatives Debbie Riddle, Patricia Harless and Senator Dan Patrick, armed with statistical data. The numbers he presented to them about Greenwood Forest, his neighborhood, were staggering.

“The majority of the homes were overvalued by $20,000 or more, and that really tells a story,” said the real estate finance major.

Using data available through the Multiple Listing Service, as well as HCAD, Skertich conducted a case study of the northwest neighborhood.

When he began comparing the prices of the homes sold in 2007 with the HCAD’s appraisals, he found that many of the homes’ selling prices were significantly lower than the district’s appraisal. One home on Pine Arbor was appraised at $172,606, and sold for $ $92,250.

In addition, he looked at the homes on his street, Pinewilde Drive, over a four-year period to evaluate the increases in each of the 16 houses. In four years, all but two of the homes increased in appraised value, one by as much as 20 percent.

The neighborhood study was done prior to him reaching an agreement on his protest with the appraisal district, a process that took 15 months, in which during an informal hearing, HCAD knocked $15,000 off the appraisal they had given his home.

Because of his lengthy battle, all but three of the 16 houses saw a decrease in their valuations between 2007 and 2008.

Though he stopped fighting for a lower appraisal, he knew more needed to be done and that the system needed a major overhaul.

Denise Hammond experienced similar frustration in her dealings with HCAD. When preparing an appraisal protest for her friend, she extensively researched the figures, preparing a spreadsheet and a concise summary that she was confident represented the facts. She came up with a sum of $186,000.

“I could not imagine from where HCAD was getting their figures on their appraisal,” Hammond said.

Because her friend rejected the $208,000 appraisal offered to her through use of the iFile system, set up to protest appraisals online, she waived her rights to an informal hearing and went straight to a meeting with the Appraisal Review Board.

“The perception is that they are trying to keep us from going down there to protest,” Hammond said about the iFile system. “If the people you are preparing your case for don’t even listen to you, what’s the point?”

She said in her friend’s case, that’s exactly what happened.

When the board asked her to provide them with comparable home sales to her house, she said there weren’t any because there had been none in her neighborhood.

Hammond said at that point, the ARB grew disinterested in her argument; they then increased the appraisal amount.

“So her choices now are to go to District Court which entails hiring an attorney, or going to arbitration, which entails putting up a $500 deposit,” Hammond said. “Both involve the expense of much time, and my friend is a single parent who runs a store front business. She cannot afford, literally, to be away from her business.”

Already suffering under fuel prices, skyrocketing electricity bills and the products impacted by their increase, Hammond said the middle income taxpayers’ hands are tied.

“We might as well remove the entire process, lease the building and fire the hundreds of employees it takes to front this “so called” process as it is a sham,” she said.